Adding Topic Maps to MW base software could be a winner -- it can generate a
wiki-site map (some think WP needs one!); it can be used to corelate the
contents of documents loaded into a wiki (like conference proceedings) with
a wiki's topic map; and would make a cool tool for any page in a wiki, most
clearly on a user page. It's perhaps a smart strategic move - ISO 82250
Topic Maps are the fruit of SGML/Hytime n-ary models that 'lost' to RDF
triples back when. Being a superset of RDF, TMs can type associations
between articles while capturing all infobox data.
Topic maps may be a compelling FUNCTIONAL upgrade for MW as it captures
subjects of an article for the first time. Given topic-map to RDF transforms
amid continuing W3 research, this could be enough for the semantic world. By
adopting say the Lib of Congress' Subject Headings, a wiki like Wikipedia
could play an important role in the semantic web. The current situation with
Wikipedia is that it's hard to have a large library of information without a
subject catalogue... right now, wikis have an author catalogue sort of, fine
for smaller hadcrafted wikis but doesn't scale well for many.
Since other platforms now have maturing topic map extensions I'm worried the
impact on wikis not to have that technology.
John McClure